On the way back from the gym, I saw a gold Prius driving toward me. I “saw” that it had green “environmental” Illinois license plates. When I got closer: nope…those were standard white plates. I would have sworn to a lie!

Reason: the gold Prius I drive has those green plates; when I saw that other car my mind just made up what it couldn’t see clearly and “filled in” the details.

I think that I do the same thing with human relationships. When I meet someone, either “on line” or in “real life”, I only see a narrow slice of them, so to speak. I see them in a particular setting, say “the office”, on a run or in a political discussion. And my brain starts “filling in the details” as to what they might be like, and I am sometimes surprised when I find that they are “not like that” at all.

I’ve seen this over and over again with my wife; she spent years working with people and giving them counselling on various levels. So part of her job was to get to understand the person, and, often, the other person made inferences about her. And many of those inferences were wildly inaccurate.

About Blueollie

To keep track of my sports activities. I rarely train for anything anymore; mostly I just do workouts of the following types: running, walking, weight lifting and swimming. My best ultra accomplishment was walking 101 miles in 24 hours in 2004. These days, I walk a marathon every once in a while (5:30 to 7 hours) There was a time when I could run a sub 40 minute 10K (did that once), but that was another lifetime ago; these a days 2427-2825 25:45-27:45 minutes for a 5K would be more like it. I also have an off and on interest in yoga and in weight training. My lifetime PB in the bench is 310; currently I do sets of 4-5 with 185.

From time to time, I post what I am thinking about mathematically

I often post links to science articles, especially articles about cosmology and evolution.

I am very sympathetic to the “new atheist” movement, though some might consider me to be an agnostic. I reject any notion of a deity that interferes with physical events, but remain agnostic to the idea that there might be something “grand and wonderful” (Dawkins’ phrase) outside of our current spacetime continuum.

I am a liberal Democrat who thinks that the current social atmosphere is tilted way too far toward the interests of big business, and I reject the idea that a “free market” cures all ills, though pure socialism doesn’t work either. I am also a believer in the freedom of speech, including speech that I might not like. Also, I’ve been involved (to a moderate degree) with political campaigns, ranging from City Council races up to Presidential races.

I like to post photos of trips and vacations.

I sometimes blog about boxing matches and baseball, football and basketball games.

I like women in spandex.🙂

Yes, I’ve removed my President Obama stuff. I still like him and I think that he has done a fine job and is continuing to do so. But that campaign is over and has been some time ago. For 2016, I am backing Secretary Clinton.